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Freedom Summer Community Teach-in

A Community Teach-in entitled Fifty Years after Freedom Summer: Civil Rights Progress and Voting Rights Reversals will be held in two locations in Oak Park. The Teach-in will commemorate the history and legacy of the 1964 Freedom Summer, in which hundreds of volunteers from across the country traveled to Mississippi to participate in voter registration drives for African-Americans in that state. The program will also include current experts on voting rights as well as address efforts underway to ensure that the gains achieved over the last fifty years are sustained. The Teach-in, sponsored by 28 Chicago area communities of faith and advocacy organizations, is free of charge and open to the public.

Part I of the Community Teach-in will be a showing of the PBS documentary film “Freedom Summer” from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Oak Park Temple B'nai Abraham Zion, 1235 N. Harlem Ave. For space planning needs for the film portion of the Teach-in only, please RSVP to Oak Park Temple Office at 708-386-3937.

Part II of the Teach-in, from 4:30 to 7:00 p.m., includes an expert panel presentation and interactive discussion at Unity Temple. The Teach-in will chronicle the progress of civil rights in the last fifty years as well as the most recent attacks on the right to vote, and will conclude with a discussion of steps needed to resume progress. Speakers include veteran Chicago civil rights activist and historian Timuel Black; an original Mississippi Freedom Rider and civic education consultant Thomas Armstrong III; long-time Oak Park civil rights activist Rev. Donald Register; Cook County Clerk David Orr; and Co-Director, Advancement Project, Judith Browne Dianis.